Many people are wondering how the digitization of the truck driving industry will have an impact. You have a few different ways that this will influence the sector. One thing’s for sure, and that is that with big companies like Amazon, Uber, and Oracle investing heavily in this sector, we will likely see a big revolution in terms of how the trucking industry works. This ever-evolving industry exists as the beating heart of the American economy, and you will likely see new technologies, new practices, new ideas, and innovations on the path.
What Digitized Trucking Will Do
You will see digitized trucking make huge waves as it will provide trucking companies with more data that they can use to enhance their business. Besides, the trucking industry will start to automate many of the things that they had previously done through manual labor in the past, and this will speed up the industry. The logistics game continues to change daily, and most experts predict that digitization will be mostly responsible for the supply chain.
Oracle Enters the $800 Billion Market.
In an $800 billion industry, you’d never expect this problem, but Oracle has entered the truck driving industry. Their goal is to match retailers and manufacturers so that they never have to pick up a phone or send a fax. What they seek to do is lessen a need for a middleman as companies transfer freight from one location to the next. Companies like Uber and Amazon have already attempted to cut out the middleman. As these companies move into this industry, it’s expected that they will cut the prices by as much as 33 percent. Uber Freight has already made $125 million in revenue during the fourth quarter of 2018. While the new business may not look as catchy as some of the other products, you will have plenty of reasons that this business could thrive.
Make More Money and Save More
What a lot of people like about the new changes is that it will allow for trucking companies to make more money while saving money. Having effective as well as efficient logistics could serve a huge role in this as the support for upstream activity improves with it. In North America, one of the problems facing the industry has been that they have a growing driver shortage. Fewer people are getting into the industry, and this has led to better pay for truckers, but it decreases the profits of the companies. The sector is trying to reinvent itself as a way of attracting the new and upcoming generation into a career in trucking.
One of the advantages of digitization could be that it helps to eliminate some of the need for more truck drivers. That’s because the vehicles will be used for better efficiency, and they will be more optimal loads. That will ultimately erase the need for as many truck drivers, which is helpful because of the shortage. Some of the ways that companies will save money include better fuel efficiency, increased highway safety, and higher compliance with the laws and regulations.
The Rise of a New Business Model
The truck driving industry has gone through many technological changes over the years. Before the use of the internet and widespread cellphone use, they had people who would visit a physical broker to figure out their loads. Under the new business model, both the carriers and the brokers will benefit from automatic transaction processing. This will also lower the amount of time needed to do these things, which will be helpful. The new model will embrace a service and solution model to help make things easier. We will move further away from what was previously an inefficient analog process, and companies will be able to raise profits while keeping their overhead lower.
Faster and More Responsive
In the past, it took longer because you had to go through someone else, and they would help you to get the freight needed. This took some time. In the future, everything will be done through technology, which will make the process much faster than ever before.
What Challenges Do We Need to Overcome?
You have a couple of challenges that will need to overcome first before we can have effectiveness. Data can turn into either a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, it provides you with highly valuable and useful information. On the other hand, it can flood you with so much information that you can’t identify what is useful and what isn’t. Another challenge that we could eventually have to face comes from the infrastructure. We have to make sure that the technology will work with where it is needed.
Freight Communication Goes Digital
With freight communication going digital, it could be more useful because we will be able to see precisely where things are at, adding to driver accountability. It will be much harder to lose freight than what it was in the past. Increasingly, we have seen trucking companies looking at this technology as a way of staying competitive while gaining the greatest advantage. The investment in technology has been meant to improve monitoring, manage company drivers and vehicles and the cargo. No longer will you have a simple point A to point B map. In the future, you will gain even more valuable insights through greater precision and a more interactive map. You can pinpoint the freight location any time you want, and you can even specify how you want the freight transported.
At the least, this new digitization of the trucking industry will help to cut response time, improve roads from congestion, and make the goods much cheaper for customers. This has become preferable to wasting money or not having the same level of efficiency. For companies that want to compete with the best, they will have to keep running technology that is the most up to date.
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